Times change. When the movies came about people said that it was a trend that will die soon. When the TV came out, even more people said that it won't catch on. And here we are again, at the dawn of IPTV, finding the first professionally-made, web-only, live action series: Sanctuary. Co-created by one of Sci-Fi Channel's Stargate SG-1 producers, Stage3Media's Damian Kindler was very kind to answer some of our questions about the promising project, which recently even hit a Guinness record as the most expensive web-only production ever ($4.5 million CDN). You can view behind-the-scenes and previews here and the first full 17-minute webisode here (includes a cameo of Stargate: Atlantis' own David Hewlett), while you can support the project by buying the HD DRM-free version of the webisodes at the official site. Read more in our interview inside!

This will eventually have to work like every other future media distribution: persistent tracking of what properties a user has bought, and then 24/7 delivery of any mediums they want the property in. So any episode of this that you buy would be remembered by the website which gives you assorted download file formats, including streaming. And if you end up buying every episode, you're naturally also given access to a full length version of them.

If a show was popular enough, it could pay its way with micropayments per-watch or advertisements.